Stupid Daylight Savngs Time

Good ol DST...Daylight Savings time was and is a left over from WW2 era...move the clocks up to save electricity and resources for the troops...back then, there was no 24/7 economy...people went to bed at 9pm and no stores were open on sunday...now fast forward to today...everything is full blast 24/7...the usefullness of DST has come and gone...the sun doesnt care what time it is...you will get x minutes of sun regardless of what time you call it...all DST did was to shift the human to an evening schedule instead of a morning schedule.( Our Culture used to be a morning culture...now its a night culture) Times zones are regulated every 15 degrees longitute...Indiana by all rights should be on CST not EST, the only states that "get it" are Indiana, Arizona, and Hawaii...the rest of the country is on DST due to political scenerios. As far as other countries are concerned, europe shifts up 1 hr as well and so does Great Britain,however, GMT stays the same yr around...Big Ben may say 6pm...but Greenwich Mean Time is still 5pm...GMT zulu, UTC does not shift to DST ever...GMT is the universal standard time which all the world uses when refering to any time throughout the world...add 5 hrs from EST or 6 hrs to CST for Illinois...9pm = 3 am GMT the next Morning...

 

Most provinces in Canada change time. The exception is Saskatchewan. I grew up in Saskatchewan. After moving to a different province, it took me years to get used to the idea of time changes.

 

Daylight Saving Time was started in the US in 1918. Several European countries used it during WW I in order to save energy. Even in today's 24/7 culture there are many more people awake at about 9PM when the sun sets in the summer than at 4AM when it would rise according to standard time. Having the daylight more closely match people's waking schedule is a great benefit for many reasons and it saves a significant amount of energy.

I admit that switching the time back and forth is a nuisance, but there are real benefits to the system. I am surprised that Prius owners are not more in favor of it because of the energy savings.

 

I don't mind the DST system, a lot of clocks come with radio receivers built in and they adjust themselves automatically. The clock of my PCs at home and at work adjust themselves automatically as well. As does my telephone at work and my cell phone. It's becoming much less of a hassle and besides it only takes me five minutes to change all the non-automatic changing clocks in the house/cars.

 

It was actually first proposed by Benjamin Franklin in Paris when he was 78 in 1784. Apparently the norm was for people to go to bed in the early morning hours and sleep until mid day. Oil lamps were very newly invented and most people burned candles at night. He calculated that if the population of Paris got up with the sun instead of sleeping until noon, they would save 64,050,000 pounds of candles through the summer months. I guess they weren't farmers who work during daylight hours regardless of the clock.
Article on Franklin

 

The NAV in the Prius has time zone and Daylight Savings Time settings. Those do not seem to control the clock. Any idea as to the purpose of those functions?

 

Just consider the confusion an air traveller arriving in the Province of Newfoundland last Sunday morning and forgetting to change his watch. Those folks work on a half-hour time zone and use DST. :lol:

 

I had always thought that the creation of DST was to help out the farmers and their cow milking schedules.

 

Except that if clocks were never invented, the farmers and the cows would get up at the same time - sunrise! Since it is little different from one day to the next, there is no adjustment.

Until the advent of real-time long distance communication, we could just as easily have chosen to do things at "n hours past sunrise". It would have been really hard to create a clock way back that could keep accurate time with that system. On the other hand you wouldn't need an alarm clock unless you needed to get up before sunrise. Of course the whole issue of sunrise/daylight hours is important only in the higher latitudes. At the equator, things don't change much and they get about 12 hours a day, every day

I did see a link that said DST saves the U.S. about 300,000 barrels of oil a year.

 

We have all of our time-keepers on GMT in 24-hour mode. Time zone changes are only in our minds.

 

A couple of years ago one of my co-workers was looking over DST data and came running in that she found records that had the dates backwards! After determining that locations were in the southern hemisphere, we told her that the data was correct.

In general many/most countries that are outside the tropics observe some form of DST.

 

Gods! I just today noticed that DST had expired. I am trying to figure out what it says about my lifestyle that I can go for 8 days before I notice that I am an hour early!

Part of the reason is that I work mostly from home with no fixed 9 to 5 schedule, and I have not turned on the television or radio in over week because I am tired of politics invading my space. The purchase of an X-box and Fable may have also contributed to the temporal distortion. Death to all monsters! (Is that in reference to the video game or politics I wonder?)

 

Damn! Make that two days.

 

I will get out next week. I have to spend the most of next week in Las Vegas for work. Since I live in Reno, Las Vegas is not a place to have fun. Mostly I will be without the company of my dog and my Prius. Talk about hardship! I'll probably have to put up with some piece of crap rental that work sticks me with. The thought makes me shudder! ukeleft: If I thought there could be a chance of getting a Prius, I'd shun the renal company work wants me to use and take a chance on Enterprise. I have to pay the difference though.

 

Hi folks,
In Oz, at this time of year, we have a crazy mixture of time zones.
Normally, the most western state (WA - my place) is 2 hours behind the eastern states (Qld, NSW, Vic, Tas) and 1.5 hours behind the central state (SA).
When DST comes in (October to March) four states (NSW, VIc, Tas, SA) go ahead 1 hour.
Qld, the northern-most of the eastern states, and WA don't change at all.
Business in WA is severely disadvantaged due to the 3 hour difference with the main eastern states.
Some (e.g. Stock Exchange, etc.) just change their working hours to minimise the effect of DST.
Others just complain about the lost hour of contact with eastern states, but carry on regardless.
There have been several referendums in WA over the years, asking the population "do you want to go to DST?".
All have been resolved as negative, due mainly to the rural vote.
The main population centre, Perth, is located at Latitude 32 degrees South, and as such enjoys many hours of sunlight in Summer.
Each year the subject comes up and is discussed heavily on state-wide radio talkback, with essentially the same result, city in favour and rural against!
I think that only those areas closer to the Poles do really benefit from using DST.
Anyway, my Prius doesn't care about the time - if it's hot (as it usually is in mid-summer), it cools me with its excellent Climate control system!

kenmac

>6000kms
average = 4.9 L/100km, mainly city freeway driving